Kosovo to Montenegro

Our search for a stopover turned into an endless journey. A repeat of the day before.

Initially, we set off for Kosovo’s wine region, but the winery in Rahovec was closed.

En route, a hilltop memorial looked promising for walkies. A clear path led up to it, but when we pulled over, we spotted a stray dog the size of a bullock on some waste ground opposite. Since it was a war memorial, we also thought about landmines. We had received a message in Albanian to suggest our unlimited Albanian SIM wasn’t. Not outside Albania at least. With no internet, we felt blinded: unable to check our facts. The path would be fine, but in any areas where mines hadn’t been cleared, a scatter of Cavapoos meant trouble – and we certainly didn’t want another altercation with a super-sized stray.

With the historic town of Gjakova in our sights, we continued.

Gjakova was a major Ottoman trading hub on the silk road. As a result, its bazaar is among the region’s largest and oldest. Sadly, Gjakova suffered terribly in the Balkan wars in the early 20th century, and was all but levelled in the Kosovo war in 1998/9. It has been lovingly restored, but when we arrived, all the roads in the city centre were dug up, as was the park up we were aiming for. We could have stayed overnight at the side of the road by the sports stadium, but a strip of tarmac next to a patch of waste ground and building works held little appeal, so we pushed on.

As afternoon turned into evening, we made way towards the national park in the north, seemingly the only place in Kosovo with a campsite. We passed a restaurant with a large car park on the roadside.

“Shall we stop here?” Mark asked.

I noticed it was getting dark, so I said, 

“I think we should quit while we’re ahead, and before it gets dark. The national park is right on the border, in one of the most heavily mined areas, so I am really worried about it for the dogs.”  

The restaurant was a single-storey construction of syrup-coloured logs with a sprawling outside terrace. It was festooned with red geraniums and heavily shaded by trees. In the neighbouring field, there were deer and a pony. It looked quaint and inviting, but something didn’t feel right.

As we fed The Pawsome Foursome, the screams of an animal in severe pain scythed through the air. The source seemed to be a grey wooden shed on the field. Shortly afterwards, the screaming stopped, and two large stray dogs limped past our truck. Mark went out to investigate. When he came back, he said,

“Their legs were red raw, but the light was fading and they wouldn’t let me close enough to have a proper look.”

I voiced my suspicions, “Do you think there’s dog fighting in there?”  

Later, a girl mounted the pony and started screaming, so we questioned ourselves. Perhaps it was our imagination, not animals being tortured.

Three young kids came to pet our dogs. The oldest, a black-haired lad of about eight, walked down the road carefully, holding two tiny cardboard cups of espresso. A gift for us. We were so touched. He spoke a little English, and they all made a huge fuss of The Fab Four.

Later, I saw them coming back with the biggest Staffordshire Bull Terrier I’ve ever seen. The boy needed both hands to restrain the bright ginger lump of muscle as he strained against a thick leather collar. The two tall strays, which were as tall and ragged as Irish Wolfhounds, scarpered the second they spotted him. I shouted to Mark,

“Get the dogs inside, quick!”

The Staffie seemed friendly enough, but he was solid and had cropped ears. In light of the screams we’d heard from the shed, our first thought was that he was a fighting dog.

The kids stopped at the bottom of our steps and, in a dispassionate monotone with the peculiar intonations of Dr. Evil or a Bond villain, the ringleader said,

“Pit Bull is hungry.”

For an awful moment, I thought he meant he wanted to feed one of our fur babies to him, or use them as bait.

We passed out a large bowl of dog food, which disappeared two gulps. The kids asked to pet our pups again, but we were nervous. Understandably, after being attacked, poor little Kai was terrified of Pit Bull. He shrank away into the back of the truck with a haunted look.

As I stared down our steps, I got a Kai’s eye perspective. All I could see was a huge gaping maw with an oversized baby-pink tongue lolling out as Pit Bull panted like a steam train. His bulging jaw muscles kicked the sides of his mouth outwards, and turned his expression into a manic grin reminiscent of Batman’s nemesis, The Joker.  

Once they had gone, Mark and deliberated about dinner. At our previous stop, the restaurant didn’t allow dogs.

“If we can’t take the dogs with us, I don’t feel comfortable leaving them home alone. This is a weird place.”

I agreed. Asking whether dogs were allowed would draw attention to our presence, so we decided to keep a low profile and eat in the truck.

It was a very uncomfortable night. The thought of dog fighting and the injured strays who had limped past made me feel so sick I couldn’t eat. Sleep eluded us both. Boy racers revved their engines as they flew by on the road until the wee small hours. If they had got it wrong, they would have ploughed into us at full pelt. Besides dogs barking at all hours, there were all kinds of other strange noises, including screaming.

The following morning, Mark echoed my thoughts and said, “I just want to get out of Kosovo.”

We were both tired and overwrought. We’d had a few late nights socialising and probably too many beers. Again, perhaps it was our imagination, but beautiful as it was, the country didn’t seem to have recovered from the war, and had an overwhelming feel of melancholy.

“I would love to go back to England for a month!” Mark said. I knew what he meant. Complaining about our little island is a favourite British pastime, but there is a lot to be said for order, safety and a temperate climate.

Since the huge dog attacked Kai on the beach in Albania, we’d been on constant red alert, looking for shepherd dogs and strays, which were everywhere – like the dirt and trash. The temperature had been above 30°C for weeks, but I hadn’t had a shower since Albania, because we were running out of water. And I won’t even mention our loo. With no campsites or facilities to be found, there was nowhere to empty it. If you ever wish to develop a compound that could knock out a heavyweight boxer in one hit, I recommend slowly maturing your chemical loo without chemicals for a few days when the temperature is above thirty.

“I feel like such a lightweight, not a rufty tufty overlander,” Mark lamented.

“It’s like having red wine with fish” I replied. Something we were once pulled up for in an Italian restaurant. “We should do what we want and what we enjoy. Our life is supposed to be fun, not an ordeal. And there’s no shame in avoiding the risk being blown up by landmines.”

Occasionally, even those living their dreams get travel fatigue.

A cyclist stopped to admire the truck. He told us,  

“The hiking in the national park is lovely. They’ve cleared the roads and paths, and the landmine areas are clearly marked.”

After two long days of driving, The Fab Four were ready for a good stretch. We like them to run free , so we wanted to walk them off lead. There was no way we could do that anywhere there could be mines.

At the border, we felt guilty when the guard asked,

“What do you think of my country? What the papers say is all wrong.”

With hindsight, I think we had worked ourselves up into a bit of a frenzy.

Our initial impressions of Kosovo had been overwhelmingly positive. Subsequently, we discovered the authorities spray stray dogs with a bluey-purple anti parasitic preparation that is also used on cattle. We had mistaken that for wounds and bruising. Had Pit Bull been a fighting dog, he would have been covered in scars, but there was not a mark on him. As for the screaming, maybe it was just the girl riding the pony.

The kids had been lovely and gentle with our pups and in the morning, they brought us two plastic cups of chilled blackcurrant juice for breakfast. 

But such is the power of night terrors, especially when you’re on the back foot, travelling in an unfamiliar culture with such a troubled recent history.

Even so, we bailed out of Kosovo. We had seen nowhere to buy a SIM card, and without internet to check where was safe, we decided the risk to our pups was too severe.

Our drive into Montenegro through the mountains was long, but picturesque, via a stunning Alpine pass. Reminders of the war were everywhere. Not least that our only exit options from Kosovo were into Montenegro or back into Albania and North Macedonia. Serbia does not recognise Kosovo. You can enter Kosovo from Serbia, but not the other way around. Try it, and you will likely be denied. If you succeed, the Serb authorites consider you have entered their country illegally, so you could face a heavy fine and prison sentence.

The Montenegrin customs was 10 km on from the Kosovan border.

Once the guard had established, “Is this a civilian truck?” all the officials spilled out of their offices to have a peek inside.

One of the lady officers told me she had lived for a time in Morecambe – a seaside town in North West England, near my home city of Blackburn. Later, when I tinkered around on Facebook, the first picture that popped up was of the Morecambe Kite Festival. I wondered about Facebook’s algorithms.

Are they telepathic?

The border insurance booth asked to see our Kosovan green card. This resulted in another insurance coup. They copied over the ‘Special Camper Insurance’ category and gave us three months’ cover for €41.

As we descended through a dense coniferous forest, we stopped for lunch at Motel Ognjište in Koruge, which had a lovely open-air restaurant in a luminously green clearing by a river. Large lop-eared rabbits loped freely around the vast green grounds. As we tucked in to delicious marinated pork with fried potatoes, we kept a close eye on The Fab Four.

We had depleted our cash supplies. Although Kosovo and Montenegro both use euros as currency, the Balkans is very much a cash driven society. I had paid €118 in cash for a bumper resupply in a supermarket the day before.

As we drove trhough Mojkovac, we searched for an ATM and somewhere to buy a SIM card. Suddenly, from the opposite carriageway, a dark Mercedes slewed accross a zebra crossing in front of The Beast to block her in. Mark’s emergency stop hurled me forwards.  

The car’s doors flew open. Two men leapt out and rushed towards us, like in a gangster movie. The driver stayed in with the engine running, ready for a quick getaway.

Wide eyed, I asked Mark,

“Is this a heist?”

Before he had chance to answer, two of the chaps positioned themselves in front of our radiator grille and waved to the driver, who snapped their photo on his phone. The Terrible Twins turned around to shoot us a naughty boy grin, raced back to their car and drove off.

I suppose in such a characterful vehicle as The Beast, you just have to expect this sort of thing!

Our final destination was Biogradska Gora national park.

We raced across a rather rickety bridge and had to circumnavigate a cow on the road. The wardens moved us down from where we parked out-of-the-way at the top of the campsite, because they said it was the bus turning circle. I can’t say our view of the lake from bed troubled me!

We could stay in the car park for €22 per night, plus €3 each entry into the park. It was expensive, but it was beautiful, tranquil, and the dogs could run free.

But even better than that, there were facilities to empty our toilet!

As we gave the pups a well deserved stretch on the forest path by the water, we met new friends and old. A slim black and white Spaniel with a silky coat scrambled over to us, wagging her whole body. We recognised Yllka, who was swiftly followed by Pepjin and Maria, the Dutch couple we’d bumped into at the vets in Fier, Albania.

A continuous stream of people, including the park wardens, arrived to peer inside The Beast, and a cute little black-and-tan stray with a white chest and dainty white socks approached to say hello.

She gave us her paw.

We gave her our hearts.

It was the start of a love affair.

Join us next time and see what happens as we explore the national park and bond with the little stray.